Margaritas, Marzipan, and Murder (Cape Bay Cafe 3)

by Harper Lin

  “Hey there, buddy,” I murmured as I tried to drag myself from sleep. I scratched him behind the ears and hoped it would distract him from his true goal—breakfast. I just wanted to lie in bed a little bit longer.

  I felt him shove his head under my hand and realized I must have fallen back asleep. “Okay, okay.” I rolled over to check the time. It was long past time for me to get up. I pulled myself into a sitting position then stumbled downstairs to let Latte out and feed him. I went back upstairs as he ate and made my way through my morning routine.

  I didn’t know what to do next in my investigation of Abraham Casey’s murder. It seemed as though I were at a dead end. I wondered if Mike was doing any better. I was sure he was. He was a professional at this, after all. I resolved to put the whole thing out of my mind, at least until some new piece of information fell into my lap or some previously overlooked connection appeared in my mind. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very hopeful about either of those prospects.

  Latte and I went for our walk, and I fixed myself a light, early lunch. One of Matt’s coworkers was having a Labor Day cookout, and we were invited. Dinner was scheduled for early and promised to be large. With the likely menu of burgers, hot dogs, chips, dips, pretzels, and sweets, I knew I would be stuffed by the end of the evening. A light lunch was exactly what I needed, and I followed it with another long walk, just as a preemptive measure against the quantity of food I expected to consume later.

  After the second walk, which was complemented by a rousing game of fetch and an extended race around the playing fields, I showered and changed into cookout clothes—shorts, a T-shirt, and a pair of sneakers. I was inspired by Matt’s warning that a game of softball was likely to break out sometime during the afternoon.

  He picked me up promptly at three o’clock and drove us to his coworker’s house in the next town.

  “So, whose house is it we’re going to again?” I asked as we cruised out of Cape Bay.

  “His name’s Brant. I’ve worked with him for about five years.”

  “And his wife?”

  “Mindy.”

  “What does she do?”

  “Not sure. Something medical, I think.”

  “‘Something medical.’ You’ve worked with the guy for five years, and you don’t know what his wife does?”

  He shrugged as he kept his eyes on the road. “Doesn’t really come up.”

  I sighed. “Are they from here?”

  Matt thought for a minute. “I don’t think so.”

  “Where are they from?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s not something that has come up.”

  I rolled my eyes and wondered if this was what Dawn felt like when she was talking to me—like she was speaking to someone from another planet whose customs were nothing like her own. Customs like actually speaking to your coworkers about their lives and families. “Kids?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? That’s something that actually came up?”

  “He has pictures of them at his desk.”

  I wanted to ask if he was sure the kids were Brant’s and not nieces and nephews or much-younger siblings but decided that particular line of questioning would serve no purpose but to frustrate me, and in all likelihood, the pictures probably were of Brant’s kids.

  Brant and Mindy did not have kids.

  I was getting fresh lemonade from the pretty, excessively decorated glass drink dispenser that even had lemon slices floating in it when Mindy came up.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” She flashed a gorgeous smile with brilliant white teeth. She was impeccably dressed in a white sleeveless collared top, white tennis skirt, and white tennis shoes. I was reasonably certain her skirt and top had been ironed more recently than they’d been worn to play tennis. Mindy’s long, lush brown hair was pulled into a high ponytail.

  “I am.” I felt woefully underdressed. “The lemonade is delicious.” I tried not to be jealous.

  “Thanks, my mom made it.” She gestured in the direction of an immaculately groomed older woman, who looked and was dressed just like Mindy, except her hair was shorter and shining white. “I have no culinary skills whatsoever.”

  I chuckled and was secretly glad I at least had one thing up on her.

  “The outfits are also all my mom. Her twist on white not being worn after Labor Day is that it’s the only color that actually can be worn on Labor Day.” Perhaps Mindy wasn’t quite as perfect as I thought.

  “Are those your kids over there?” I gestured with my lemonade glass, which managed to be frosty cold despite the end-of-summer heat, at a group of kids running around who were also dressed in immaculate white. I suspected their clothes would stop being white long before the party ended.

  “Oh God, no!” Mindy exclaimed. “Nooo. No, no, no. No kids for me.”

  “Are they Brant’s?” I thought perhaps they were her stepchildren, and her mother insisted on them also being dressed in white.

  “No.” She looked confused. “They’re my sister’s. Brant and I don’t have kids.”

  “But Matt—” I started then stopped, realizing what had happened. “Matt’s an idiot.”

  “Let me guess, no clue about any of his coworkers’ personal lives beyond the most basic details?”

  “Not a one.” I paused. “Your name is Mindy, right?” I dreaded the answer.

  She laughed. “Sure is. And you’re Franny?”

  “Well, most people call me Fran. Or Francesca. Whichever. Franny’s fine, too, though.”

  “Men.” she laughed again. “You’re a chef?”

  “I own a coffee shop. Antonia’s Italian Café, over in Cape Bay.”

  “Oh, I love that place! The best coffee I’ve ever had. And your desserts! Seriously, I wish I could bake like that.”

  “We bring most of it in. I’ve been known to make a cupcake or two, though.”

  “Still jealous.” She smiled.

  “Matt said you do something medical?”

  “Pharmacist.”

  My heart skipped a beat. I forced myself to focus on the lovely conversation I was having with Mindy and not on the other pharmacist who’d recently been occupying my thoughts.

  “That must be interesting.”

  “It is. Although you wouldn’t know it from the convention I just came from.”

  “Convention?”

  “Pharmacist convention over in Providence. I genuinely love learning about new medications and reading the literature, but, my God, the presentations were boring. I hardly even know why I go except to see a couple old friends I rarely get to catch up with.”

  “You said you just came from it?”

  “Well, I got back Saturday afternoon. Drove out to Providence on Wednesday, had a reception that night, seminars all day Thursday and Friday, a couple more Saturday morning, then came home. I thought about just driving over there every day instead of staying in the hotel, but it’s just far enough that I didn’t want to do that, you know?”

  I nodded absently. Wednesday through Saturday. She’d gone to Providence for a pharmacy convention and stayed from Wednesday through Saturday. The same days Abraham Casey, the pharmacist, had been booked at the Seaside Inn. I wondered if that was the excuse he’d given his wife for his trip out of town. It made so much sense. What better excuse? And it would have been easier than years ago when she would have caught on if she called the hotel and he wasn’t there. No, she would just call his cell phone, which he could answer from, and say he was, anywhere.

  “You don’t happen to know a guy named Abraham Casey, do you? He’s a pharmacist, too. I think he was supposed to be at that convention, now that you’ve mentioned it.” I felt safe saying his name without her connecting it to the body in the alley in Cape Bay. It hadn’t been printed in the paper yet—neither the Boston paper nor the local one—and as far as I knew, it wasn’t public knowledge.

  Mindy thought for a moment. “No, can’t say I do. Is he a friend of yours?”

  “An
acquaintance. Just thought it was worth a shot asking. It’s a small world and all, you know?”

  “Oh, I know. You wouldn’t believe the connections I make—I once filled prescriptions for years for a woman before I found out she was the wife of my very first boyfriend back in middle school. It’s always worth asking.”

  “Well, I’m glad that you don’t think I’m crazy.”

  “Not at all. Crazy is making your thirty-five-year-old daughter dress in tennis whites even though she hasn’t picked up a racket in almost twenty years.”

  “Mindy! Franny!” someone called. We both looked up in the direction the voice had come from. Brant was standing across the lawn waving his hands over his head, a softball bat in one and a glove in the other.

  Matt was beside him also waving his arms in the air. “Softball!”

  “So much for relaxing in the shade,” Mindy said. She dropped her glass into a bucket of soapy water and motioned for me to do the same.

  “Do you have enough glasses to get through the day?” I wondered who had that many glasses and how they kept up with the dishes.

  “More than enough. Mom rents them and pays her friend’s granddaughter to wash them and cycle them through the freezer throughout the day.”

  “Wow.” I was impressed at the effort her mother made for what was otherwise your average Labor Day cookout.

  “Yeah, wow.”

  As we headed across the field toward where Matt and Brant were trying to figure out how to anchor a paper plate to the grass so it could serve as home plate, I thought about the remarkable coincidence of Mindy being a pharmacist and virtually laying out Abraham Casey’s excuse for getting out of town.

  Chapter 16

  “Looked like you were having a good time with Mindy,” Matt said as we drove back to Cape Bay.

  “I did!” I was pleased to realize I meant it. After our talk about the pharmacy convention, we’d chatted for the rest of the evening, laughing through the softball game about how useless we were as we swung and missed balls our significant others said we should have hit, and we failed to come within roughly a mile of balls hit in our direction in the field. We were both pretty sure we would have gotten kicked out of the game if they’d had enough players to replace us.

  “What’d you two talk about?”

  “A little of everything. How useless you and Brant are at accurately learning and sharing personal information about each other. Fun fact: they do not have any children.”

  “They don’t?”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “Then who were all those kids running around?”

  “Really, Matty?”

  “What?” he asked innocently.

  “They belonged to any of the other people who were there.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  I gave up and decided to bring up the other significant piece of information I’d acquired. “Anyway, Mindy is a pharmacist.”

  “Oh yeah? I thought it was something medical.”

  “She went to a pharmacy convention this week. Wednesday through Saturday.”

  “Sounds dull.”

  “She said it was.” I paused and waited to see if he’d figure out what I was getting at. When he didn’t, I chose to be glad he was paying more attention to the road than to what I was trying to tell him, as the alternative would probably not turn out well for anyone. “Can you think of anyone else who’s a pharmacist?”

  “Um, I think my pharmacist’s name is Bill or something. Bob maybe.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Who am I supposed to be thinking of?” He clearly did not have much patience for my quizzing. Again, I chose to see it as a good thing.

  “Maybe someone who was found in an alley?”

  “Casey?”

  “You got it.”

  “Did she know him or something?”

  I decided to lay it all out for him. Trying to get him to figure the whole thing out was going to exhaust my patience. “I think the conference she went to was what he used as a cover story for his wife. The dates line up perfectly. Ed Martin said he booked his room three months ago, which is about the time you’d register for a conference.”

  “How do you know he didn’t actually go to the conference? Maybe he just doesn’t like staying at the same hotel as everybody else.”

  “Providence is an hour and a half away, Matty. It’s closer to Boston than it is to Cape Bay.”

  “So why would he even book a hotel? Why not stay at home and just drive down every day?”

  “That’s the point. What if he told his wife he was going to the conference and had to stay there so he could network or go to all the activities or whatever? At the conferences I’ve been to, interacting with your peers is more valuable than the actual sessions. Besides, would you want to drive from Boston to Providence in time for a session at eight in the morning?”

  Matt visibly cringed at the thought of the traffic that would be involved. There was a reason he didn’t live in the city even though he could easily have gotten a more lucrative job in Boston than the one he had. It wasn’t as though Bostonians were particularly known for their superior driving skills, and anyone who both lived and worked in the city would take public transportation if they needed to commute farther than they could walk. No, travelling from Boston to Providence and back again each day for a conference was a ridiculous idea. And so was travelling from Cape Bay to Providence.

  “Okay, you have a point,” Matt conceded. “But why did he come here? If he was using the conference as a cover, he could have gone anywhere.”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I have a feeling whatever it was is what got him killed.”

  “You sure it wasn’t his wife? She found out that he wasn’t at the conference after all and came after him?”

  “Just for going on vacation without her? There would have to be more. I mean, you couldn’t blame her for confronting him, but killing him? Seems a bit much.”

  “What if he got violent, and she fought back? Self-defense?” he suggested.

  “So she shot him and made it look like a suicide to cover it up? I don’t know.”

  “Think about it—they have a kid, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If she kills him, she goes to jail, and then what happens to the kid? Besides, you can’t benefit from a life insurance policy if you cause the death.”

  I turned my head slowly to look at him. “And why do you know that?”

  He grinned. “TV. I swear.”

  “I hope so.” I settled back in my seat. I thought over Matt’s suggestion. It seemed plausible. It was one of the first theories we’d had—a lovers’ quarrel. Since I’d found out about Abraham’s rendezvous with Suzy, it seemed even more plausible. Maybe Leah Casey had found out her husband lied about going to the conference then came to Cape Bay to confront him. Maybe she caught him with Suzy. Maybe she confronted him. Maybe she was so angry she killed him. Or maybe he got violent when she confronted him, and she defended herself. Matt’s points about jail and insurance both seemed valid.

  I wondered if I should call Mike and fill him in on what I’d learned. I didn’t really want him to know I’d blatantly disregarded his direction not to get involved, but I couldn’t very well keep information from him that could be critical to solving a murder. It had been one thing when I had some lingering questions—who the victim was, who killed him, why they killed him, why they arranged it to look like a suicide. I hadn’t meant to go this far. I had just been curious and had a few questions. Mike would likely be furious if I came clean, but I didn’t see what choice I had. For all I knew, withholding information was a crime of its own. Maybe that’s what my mother had meant when she said “curiosity killed the cat.” Once I gave in to my curiosity, I was doomed no matter what.

  Matt parked the car in his driveway and walked me home. He stood with me while Latte ran around the yard, then kissed me goodnight. Latte and I went up to bed. I expected to be up again half the
night thinking about what I was going to do with my information, but apparently now that my questions had all been answered, my brain and body were both ready for rest. My head had barely hit the pillow when I fell sound asleep.

  I woke up early the next morning, knowing I had a big day ahead of me. I had an exercise class, a haircut, work, and a night out with Sammy. Somewhere in there, I had to contact Mike Stanton and fill him in on everything I’d learned. I took solace in the fact that even though he might be mad at me, he probably couldn’t arrest me.

  Latte and I hurried through our morning routine, leaving me just enough time to walk to the gym before my class started. I was taking a kickboxing class, something I’d long resisted. I’d never liked all the hitting and kicking involved. It felt too aggressive, even if it was just a punching bag I was attacking. I preferred to alleviate my stress by curling up on the couch with a nice glass of red wine. I wondered if I should recommend that method of relaxation to Suzy but decided she was probably familiar with the effects of alcohol.

  The young, perky front desk clerk at the local gym had extolled the virtues of kickboxing, encouraging me to sign up, even if just for one month to see how I liked it. When I declined, she suggested water aerobics. I signed up for kickboxing. After I’d paid for the class, I wondered if she had deliberately manipulated me into it. But since I was already signed up, and I'd only committed to a single month, I stuck with it and eventually even found that I liked it. Perky Karli smiled every time I walked past her on my way to class, and she was kind enough not to say anything when I signed up for a second month.

  After kickboxing, I headed home to take a shower. I felt slightly ridiculous washing my hair less than an hour before paying someone to do it for me, but I couldn’t handle the thought of going into Beach Waves with sweaty, gross hair. It was a catch-22. I could get a shower before I got my hair done and have someone rewash my already clean hair, or I could wait and shower after my cut and ruin the blowout with the humidity. Double washing my hair was less of a blow to my dignity.